The Wannabe
Quorum prs magna fui . . .
I've always wanted to ask my
mother what it felt like
to-
-to bring a child in from one wet-
closet into another world where
she herself had drowned within
the tears of a self-deluge brought
on by fears of her own making
-making me feel at home
with fears of my own
ineptness and the emptiness that had lain
long like a child borne
out of an unhealthy anger; forced
into a mediation between the living and what
whose breasts at I once suckled-
considered dead
-dead to the fact that if my mother had ever spoken about him more than
once
-to me he wouldn't have been the
one who had fathered these guilt-
ridden eyes that sometimes cried out constantly
wanting to ask for attention, constantly
wanting what I felt was due to me, wanting
only to know the truth about bottled-
tears and if they age.
by Lee W. Doane, 91-B-1447 Box 51, Comstock, NY 12821